Coast Transit Authority

Coming to Coast Transit Authority (CTA)
in Gulfport, Miss., the morning after Hurricane
Katrina, Kevin Coggin, executive
director, found the property under 3 feet
of water. "All of our equipment had some
water damage. All the offices had a foot
of water, the shop had 2 feet. It took us a
week to get everything cleaned up so we
could run anything."

Fortunately, help was there to get the
buses out on the streets as quickly as possible.
"We've had a lot of help from a lot of
people," Coggin emphasizes. The Federal
Transit Administration (FTA), FEMA, the Community
Transit Association of America (CTAA)
and APTA were some of the organizations
that were there after the storm. Coggin
states, "The CTAA came here immediately
after the storm and was on the ground here
in constant contact with us, assisting us
in recovery.

"The FTA and CTAA were instrumental in
us getting the FEMA mission assignment;
it is what FEMA calls its emergency operating
assistance." This operating assistance
allowed CTA to provide free service and restore
service from October 2005 through
the end of February 2006.

Coggin adds, "The FTA came immediately
after the storm and provided day-today
transit planning assistance, provided
a consultant to give us constant help."
He continues, "They did two things. They
gave us deferred local match on our federal
subsidies, which gave us an opportunity
to meet the immediate need and
worry about the money later, and they
gave us daily access to transit planning
help through DMJM Harris. It was a tremendous
help to us to get through the
crisis period."

With the assistance the agency was
receiving, it was able to be up and running
one week after the storm. "We had a fixed route
service back out on the street and
we were running demand response with
no restrictions," Coggin says. "Whatever
people called for, we just did it."

People had lost their homes and lost
their automobiles. They were trapped in
these hurricane-damaged communities and
they were desperate. The community relied
on public transportation for help during this
time. Coggin explains, "Our routes were
designed to connect life support, recovery,
rebuilding services." The routes connected
people to all the hospitals, medical clinics,
the Disaster Relief Center and the Points
of Distribution. "People had access to Disaster
Relief Centers, kind of like one-stop
shopping where all the governmental agencies
are there, FEMA, MEMA, Red Cross,
Salvation Army, all those people are there,"
Coggin says.

Building a Career in Transit

This was all probably more than Coggin
had ever imagined when he started as a
diesel mechanic working at a local Detroit
Diesel engine distributor in Biloxi, Miss.
From there it was Hausman Bus Sales,
which introduced him to the bus industry.
A larger competitor bought out the company
and the branch closed.

In September of 1989, Coggin went to
work at Coast Transit Authority as a maintenance
supervisor. "Similar to what I was
doing at Hausman Bus Sales," he explains.
"I was doing the same thing, managing the
maintenance program."

As the company grew, Coggin got more
into the business end of things. "I got into
things like procurement, construction projects,
those kinds of things," he says. "Spending
all the money," he adds with a laugh. "I
wasn't responsible for worrying about how
to pay for it, just spending it all."

The CTA board of directors appointed
Coggin as executive director in September
of 2003 and he has been enjoying it since
- challenges included. "The job is definitely
not monotonous as anybody in the transit
business knows," he says. "It's a very dif-
fi cult fi eld to be in, very challenging to keep
it going and to grow it." Coggin adds, "It's
very gratifying to be successful in doing a
job that's hard to do."

Daily Operations

It is a good thing he likes a challenge.
Dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane
Katrina may have taken over his agenda
in the last year but CTA has always been
challenging covering such a large service
area with a diverse ridership. CTA serves
three coastal counties, providing fixed-route
and ADA/paratransit services to Hancock,
Harrison and Jackson counties.

With such a large coverage area, keeping
the demand response service effective and
cost effective has been demanding. "We
take senior citizens to day centers everyday,
we take them grocery shopping once a week
and we'll take them to doctor's appointments
up to three times a week." Coggin adds, "It's
an excellent program, we're very proud of it."
CTA also takes mentally disabled adults to
day work centers. Coggin says, "All these
senior citizens and all these adults, we
provide the means for them to continue as
productive citizens and it really means a lot
to them. They really are happy with what we
do for them, they really like it."

Rebuilding a Community

Coggin talks about the challenges of
rebuilding and stresses, "Our biggest challenge
is to be a part of a community, to grow
the public transit system, to be responsive
and to be a part of the growth of the community
from the rebuilding of Katrina.

"The communities want public transportation
to be planned as part of the growth,
not an afterthought," Coggin says. A governor's
commission kicked off the recovery
plan and each individual city, community
and county is going through the planning
and rebuilding efforts.

CTA was the lead provider of evacuation
transportation prior to Hurricane Katrina but
as Coggin explains, it has become more
organized post Katrina. "We're now an integral
part of the Harrison County Emergency
Management Agency and we are the
transportation coordinator for the county
not just for evacuation transportation but
for emergency transportation period." He
stresses, "There is a plan. It is more structured,
more organized."

A year-round registration system for
people in Harrison County is just one part
of the planning process. People that think
they may need evacuation transportation
are screened and preregistered. CTA provides
the out-of-town transportation but
not the buses. "Our equipment stays local;
we're managing the coordination effort, the
state agency, to bring in buses and to take
people out of the county."

There are still 30,000 to 40,000 people
living in the area in FEMA campers. Much of
the displaced population has moved out of
the coastal area and into the upper part of
the three southern counties. "We're working
now to put together a work transportation
program to fi nd out where all the folks are
and provide a transportation link from where
they're living to the jobs that are reestablishing
on the coast," Coggin explains. "We have
a lot of manufacturing, a lot of shipyards, a
lot of casinos, a lot of major employers." He
adds, "We want to keep people connected
to the coast, those jobs.

"If we can keep them employed on the
coast and interested in the coast, we're hoping
they'll move back home." The housing
shortage means there are not enough workers
and businesses are struggling. Many
companies are busing in workers and CTA is
developing programs to assist with that.

Staff of the Year

Listening to Coggin talk about the damaged
community and working at getting
workers to jobs on the coast it is easy to
forget CTA still has problems of its own post
Katrina. "Our employees suffered just like
the rest of the community. Many of them
lost their home, lost everything," Coggin
says. "They showed up for work the very
next day. The maintenance department
started cleaning up, getting buses ready to
run, straightening up the maintenance facility
so that we could support operations.

"Bus drivers showed up the next day.
They recognized the condition the community
was in and how important the services
are that we provide." He emphasizes,
"People needed us more after the storm
than they ever did. They desperately needed
transportation, public transportation."

Coggin described how one of the CTA
drivers was living out of her van and coming
to work every day. "She could have been
down at the FEMA desk trying to get a trailer
to live in but she was at work everyday
because she knew that her folks that she
carried every day, she knew what kind of
condition they were in."

Coggin was not the only one that recognized
the sacrifi ces the CTA staff made;
the CTAA honored Coast Transit Authority
with the 2006 Community Transportation
System of the Year award. "That's directly
attributed to our employees," Coggin states.
"To receive that award was really a true
honor for me, to go and receive that award
on behalf of our employees."

It has not been easy for CTA and its staff.
With the housing shortage, it is also feeling
the work force shortage and a year later is
still struggling to hire mechanics. "It's getting
better, so people are starting to come
back," Coggin says. "It's been a challenge
to keep an adequate work force going to
meet the needs of the community. People
want to come back, they want to work, and
there is no place for them to live."

Keeping the staff going has meant a
strong focus on employee morale year
round. The staff often has to go fi ght their
own battles with insurance companies,
FEMA or contractors. Coggin emphasizes,
"We're very conscious that in order for
us to provide a good service we have to
have good employees and to have good
employees we have to have a good work
environment.

"You talk to folks and you sympathize
with them and work with them," Coggin
explains. "Be understanding and be very
fl exible with their work.

"We really just try to be as sympathetic
as we can and work with them the best
we can.

"I had damage to my home but I had a
home to live in. To see people coming into
work every day, working eight to 10 hours every
day, who lost everything really motivated
me. Kept my spirits up," he says.

Aid after the Storm

Throughout the conversation, Coggin
could not say enough about all of the different
agencies and organizations that helped
the agency. Providing money and resources,
national organizations and federal agencies
worked to get CTA on the road again. For future
disasters of this nature, there was one
improvement he thought could be made,
"The Federal Transit Administration needs
emergency assistance authority.

"The FTA understands what we do.
They shouldn't have to go through another
agency." He explains, "The FTA had to go
beg money from FEMA to help me." Coggin
stresses CTA received much help from
FEMA, it is not meant to be critical of FEMA.
"A lot of other federal agencies [have emergency
assistance authority]. Federal highways,
FAA, Maritime Administration, they all
have emergency assistance authority when
something like this happens.

"They step in and do what needs to be
done to maintain services." Again, Coggin
emphasizes, "I don't want to sound like a
slap to FEMA because it's not. FEMA gave
us $1.5 million towards emergency operating
assistance allowing us to do things we
would not have been able to do.

"I do not believe it is as recognized as it
should be how important public transportation
is in a catastrophic event and we really
need help," Coggin states. "We're hurt bad,
the communities depend on us and we really
need help providing a service that needs
to be provided." After a pause he stresses,
"At a time when the community needed us
the most, we struggled the most."

With all the help, there are still struggles.
"Our congressional delegation is fi ghting
very hard to get us help." Coggin explains,
"We had $200 million dedicated to transit
assistance in the last Hurricane Katrina
Relief funding bill to help us and every penny
of it was taken out by Congress.

"The Senate put it in there and when it
went to congressional committee, the House
was successful in having it taken out.

"The president specifically identified that
money as something that shouldn't be in
there." Coggin elaborates, "He specifically
identifi ed public transportation hurricane
relief money as something that should not
have been in that supplemental bill.

"I currently have a $7.4 million request
in to replace my bus fl eet with new
vehicles," Coggin says.

Summarizing the catastrophe, Coggin
remarks, "We went through the worst and
really came out OK thanks to the help of
a lot of people." He emphasizes, "I really
can't say that enough. Everybody calling,
'what can we do,' 'how can we help' and
they continue to do so."

Moving Forward

A year later, there is still a long way
to go. "We have the mess cleaned up,
the debris is cleaned up," Coggin says.
"We're really just now starting to rebuild.
Businesses are starting to rebuild, people
are starting to rebuild their homes."

Coggin shares a laundry list of challenges
that the community faces. Many
people are struggling with insurance
claims and the new base fl ood elevations
are forcing people to rebuild. He stresses,
"It's going to take a long time to rebuild
but everybody's working as hard as they
can. Just like us."

Part of that rebuilding is with a governor's
commission for recovery that Gov.
Barbour initiated immediately after the
storm. With CTA heavily involved in the
plan, Coggin says, "We're working with
each individual community on their plans
and the FTA has come up with some recovery,
planning assistance money to
help us do a new transit development
plan. " With the help of DMJM Harris and
ECOM, Coggin is optimistic about the
short-range plans and long-range plans
for the future.

"We've got a really good future that's
got the potential to really grow the system
to be much larger than we are now." Coggin
says, "That is one of the things that
is so great about Coast Transit right now.
It's the future that looks so great."

It may have been a lot for any agency
to go through, but when I first started
talking to Coggin he had said he loved the
challenge of the public transit business.
Though weathering Katrina was more than
he could have imagined, he remains optimistic.
"It was a good experience for
me," he says with a laugh. "I like helping
people and when you're successful at it,
it's a good feeling."

AGENCY AT A GLANCE:
Service Area:
60 Square Miles
113,500 Population
VOMS1: 31
APM2: 2,782,400
Operators3: 41 FT, 8 PT
1- Vehicles operated in maximum service
2- Annual passenger miles (2005)
3- Number of full-time and part-time operators for fixed-route service